Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), India’s largest software services firm, on Wednesday became the second Indian company to cross Rs6 trillion in market capitalization after a 17% rally in its share prices so far this year.

On Wednesday, TCS share price touched a record high of Rs3,254.80 on the BSE, and gained as much as 4.89% in intraday trading. It closed at Rs3,174.60, up 2.3% from its previous close. TCS’s market capitalization is now Rs6.07 trillion. Since the start of this year, the stock has added nearly Rs1 trillion to its market capitalization.

Oil and retail-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd is the country’s first company to cross the Rs6 trillion market cap mark.

TCS is way behind global technology firms in terms of market capitalization. It holds the 17th position among the most valuable international technology firms.

Among all listed companies the world over, Reliance Industries is at 118th place while TCS ranks 119th in terms of market capitalization.

The recent surge in TCS shares was triggered by three large new orders won by the company since it announced its December quarter earnings.

The company said this month that it had won a $690-million, 10-year contract from a unit of British insurer Prudential Plc. It won two more than $2 billion, multi-year outsourcing contracts from television ratings measurement firm Nielsen and Transamerica Life Insurance Co., a unit of Dutch insurer Aegon NV, in December and earlier this month, respectively.

“The announcement of three big business deals is positively impacting investor sentiment," said Satish Kumar, research analyst at the fundamental research desk of Choice Broking.

“In addition to that, IT is only among the few sectors which offers value in this bull run with stretched valuations of many sectors. Further, IT companies are also likely to remain beneficiaries of the big tax cut in the US. All these factors have increased interest of investors towards the IT sector and a leader like TCS will attract customers," Kumar added.

IT stocks have been gaining since the start of the year after brokerage firm Morgan Stanley Research predicted that Indian IT services stocks may be set for a turnaround in 2018.

“Large cap stocks have underperformed the Sensex for the last three years. Valuations are at or below long-term averages and an improving global macro could spur tech spending, which could re-rate stocks, in our view," said a Morgan Stanley report dated 15 January.

The brokerage house has upgraded Infosys, Tech Mahindra Ltd and HCL Technologies Ltd to “overweight" as valuations are at or below long-term averages. The firm expects that an improvement in banking, financial services and insurance and retail verticals will help TCS and hence it upgraded it to “equal-weight".

Of the 50 brokers tracking the TCS stock on Bloomberg, as many as 12 have a “buy" rating, 28 have a “hold" rating and 10 asked investors to sell the stock.

On 11 January, TCS reported dollar revenue of $4.79 billion in the quarter ended December, a 1% rise from the preceding three months and up 9.1% from the year-ago period. Profit rose 1.1% sequentially to $1.01 billion (Rs6,531 crore), up 1.2% from $1 billion in the year-ago period.